It seems volume one has maxed out at 15 pages (at least for me, on 3 separate computers and 2 different networks)!!! It had a good run, and a lot of nice photos, a few even spectacular!

Time to turn the page...(but the original can be found here Volume 1 thanks to blondgecko!)

A Snout With A Snoot...Pentax K10D, FA 43mm Limited, Elinchron Skyport wirless trigger and snooted Vivitar 285HV at 1/16 power! Just a JPEG extraction from the RAW file, hoping to get a bit more detail in the highlights when I convert the RAW file

In the clouds of NH. Nothing like 100% humidity and low cloud cover!!! The 50mph wind gust were an added bonus

I'm planning on spending some of my holiday time going back and re-working a bunch of my old photos from when I didn't know as much as I do now about Photoshop. Here's one I was playing around with last night.

Place is Qing Ren Gu (Lovers' Valley), Huangshan, China (there's a scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon where a couple of fighters run across the top of this pool). It's actually a mosaic of eight exposures (no wide angle lens for me at the time... just the Pentax Optio WP).

Original:

Re-done:

- added a fair bit more pop to the colours of the trees (and, to a lesser extent, the pool) - heavily burned-in the dark tones of the rocks around the rim, to bring some contrast back. - copied, cloned and overlaid (multiply mode) a piece of rock to add some texture to the badly blown-out slope on the left.

Recent ice storm that took out power to 1.25M business and homes. And a new ice climbing area I discovered in New York. A few of our friends are still without power on day #6. We were without power for 40 hours, and then 6 hours!

The ice storm was actually a test of several things:

1) The ability of my old Kiron to work on digital sensor (some said it would ghost and flare), this lens is incredible! Low CAs, no vignetting on digital, and no ghosting. Very compact, F/2, well built, and tack sharp on both film and digital.

2) The ability to use my Acer Netbook to organize, edit and upload RAW files.

3) The quality/ease of use of UFRAW, GIMPSHOP, and FastStone Image viewer. All 3 programs are free, and use VERY little system resources.

Suffice to say the lens, netbook, and software worked really well. And it validated my choice to eschew the Epson P-6000 and go with the netbook. The advantage of the Netbook is that I can not only dump images to it like the P-6000 since it has a 160GB hard drive, but I can also sort, upload, and edit them. The netbook also allows me to do "tethered" shooting from the DSLR. Sure a laptop can do all of this, but the Acer One is EXACTLY 1/2 the form factor of a 14.1 inch laptop, and weighs about 50% as much.

Yeah, JPEG it was. No RAW capability on that camera. Pretty decent for what it is, though - the underwater and macro capabilities are really quite cool.

There probably is a bit of colour shift... hard to say how much, though. My other pictures from the same area show a fair bit of reddish tint in the rocks and the foliage (it was autumn at the time). The water's pretty much as I remember it... believe it or not, that pool is actually about four metres deep!

How did you get such a beautiful place to yourself. And...I give, how did you get the underwater photo?

The place was actually incredibly crowded - the hardest part of taking photos there was getting shots with nobody in them. Swimming is absolutely banned there, on pain of... I don't know what... so at least there weren't people in the water to worry about.

As for the underwater shot - the Optio WP is waterproof to 5 feet. Just stuck the camera under, took the series of shots (actually, a couple of series, just in case), and then spent the next 5 minutes trying to get some feeling back into my hands. That water was cold!

How did you get such a beautiful place to yourself. And...I give, how did you get the underwater photo?

The place was actually incredibly crowded - the hardest part of taking photos there was getting shots with nobody in them. Swimming is absolutely banned there, on pain of... I don't know what... so at least there weren't people in the water to worry about.

As for the underwater shot - the Optio WP is waterproof to 5 feet. Just stuck the camera under, took the series of shots (actually, a couple of series, just in case), and then spent the next 5 minutes trying to get some feeling back into my hands. That water was cold!

I never used the W20 I borrowed from my Dad under water, although it was in the water and rain quite a bit.

I've yet to decide if I like that high sync effect you go for in the bottom photo Wes. I think that one is my favorite of this effect.

What was the shutter speed?

One from March 2007 actually. I posted one of these (i think) back then, but my brother wanted a few black and whites for his house since he moved in back in 2006...yikes...so I finally decided to run some off for him as a Christmas present. Unfortunately he's gonna have to mat and frame them, because they'll be getting here Christmas Eve!

This isn't the same photo but a different version (one was taken in the morning and one at night, this one had more ambient light from the skylights), but one that I really went at with all sorts of dogding and burning, a local contrast enhancements. Added some grain, and overall while I liked the original, this one is pretty much exactly what I wanted.

The bottom one is the only one of the set that uses HSS, (ISO 400, F16, 1/400) and I could have probably gotten away with standard synch if I wanted. The others are all studio strobes at 1/250th of less. Did a bit tonight outside with the white lighting and vagabond II and will post up a couple once I get them finished...

The bottom one is the only one of the set that uses HSS, (ISO 400, F16, 1/400) and I could have probably gotten away with standard synch if I wanted. The others are all studio strobes at 1/250th of less. Did a bit tonight outside with the white lighting and vagabond II and will post up a couple once I get them finished...

From last night...more coming down now. I expect we'll finish up with 20-30 inches.

Took it out to an empty unplowed parking lot to test the AWD with the crappy stock tires (have a new set in the garage for the winter). Incredibly capable for an $18,000 Go-Kart! Handles the corners well (on par with a Mini), gets 30mpg on the highway, I'm averaging 27 overall! Could not be happier with any aspect other than the speed!

Thanks much for the positive feedback It is a cool time for sure, and I am excited to try to do some more as well! And, you really don't need all that much power - I could have probably just used a single 580II in the softbox, though probably at close to 1/1, rather then 1/16th on the WL.

Here is another - you can see the ghosting from the really slow shutter speeds...

I like the flash with the sunsets a lot, the daylight ones with the HSS tend to not be a fave, but to each his own!

Some from this summer/fall. Trying to put my 2008 slide show together and finishing up a few leftover folders of images!

And from a little night skiing the other night on 2 feet of fresh powder! Actually an old Canon G3 with a Vivitar 285HV and Ebay slaves (super high tech setup), as I note in the blog, this shot wasn't the goal. I was going to backlight myself and also record the star trails wirelessly. Unfortunately it was about 13F outside and the triggers wouldn't fire (and I doubt the skyports would have either, MAYBE pocket wizards would have!!). So I worked with what I had, and just did the star trails with a little direct flash and a 15 second exposure! In hindsight, I'm not sure what sort of idiot goes outside in 13F temps and 30mph wind gust at sea level to mess with star trails and wireless strobing....so basically I got what I deserved!